I have to say, the D23 retrospectives are always excellent, but the four parks panels were particularly painful (assuming that you classify the Mickey and Minnie Birthday as, essentially, an extended Runaway Railway clip to promote McDonalds, where the toys are actually more interesting to me than hearing about that dang Steamboat Willie Whistle yet again).
I think it’s telling that, even with the hosts delivering clearly vetted and scripted questions, most of the panelists had to essentially say “Oh, details? New experiences? Things that are unique/coming/you may not know about? Here, let me redirect the question and talk about how great our team is.” Having been at some stilted D23 Panels and having seen many of the filmed panels from the past few months, I’ve always found at least some small amount of fun and at least the briefest amount of candidness that makes the panel totally worthwhile - perhaps it’s the electricity of the fans in the room that has changed. It’s really a shame that it feels like the panelists seemed to be scared of answering questions about their work, or that the answer to “Is there anything new you can share” is in effect “No.”, or “I don’t know what’s been cut yet, I can’t speak to that”, or “There’s nothing new, this ride is a clone”.